The Week It Rained
by Bialy
Summary: Things had changed, and one of those things was Matsuda. A look through Ide's eyes after the Kira Case concludes. Mildly AU. Slight spoilers. IdexMatsuda.
1. Pursuit

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. I just bastardize it. Lyric lines are 'Read My Mind' by The Killers.

Note: The alternative title for this story is 'Matsuda is a drunk lonely bastard and Light was way cooler', selected by my boyfriend. ...We don't always agree.

So yeah it's really been ages since I wrote some Death Note stuff, huh? This is a bit of a...departure from my usual style. This is post-Kira, taskforce-centric angst, which may not sound like much of a difference from my other stuff, but once you start reading it, you'll see what I mean. Mainly, I have taken Matsuda in a completely different direction to normal. So different, that it might be OOC. But if you stick with me, I hope I can show you what I was aiming for. This is much darker than my normal stuff, and I can't remember the last time I wrote something that felt this weird.

This story is completely written (for once) and I will aim to get a new chapter up every day. Chapters are very short, usually around 1000 words or less. There will be seven chapters. This story will span one week, and is set several years after the Kira case closes. For the purposes of characterisation, it does not take account of the last chapter, and fr purposes of plot, it does not take account of the 'three years on' oneshot. Please enjoy, and any and all feedback is, as always, appreciated.

Warnings: Spoilers for the end of the series. Bad language. Sexual content. Homosexuality. Don't like any of those, please don't get yourself worked up by reading.

x

**The Week It Rained**

**-**

**Chapter One - Pursuit**

-

_On the corner of main street  
Just tryin' to keep it in line  
You say you wanna move on and  
You say I'm falling behind_

_- _

The streets are black and it's raining. Sheets and sheets of water are pouring down, shattering against the pavement, against the tarmac, and the city is silent but for this, the pitter-patter, the drumming, the noise of rain.

Then there are footsteps. They splash in the layer of water coating the world, loud and sudden and silence-shattering, increasingly in volume as they come closer. They fade off. The runner had passed. The streets are back to the way they were before, the only ripples those of falling rain meeting fallen rain.

More footsteps. Louder than before. More people, three of them. One is bigger than the others by far, his splashes are heavier, deeper, and his paces are longer; he gets there first. He draws to a halt. More splashes as those with him catch up. They stop short seeing his static figure.

The splashing sounds stop as all three are still. The two latecomers watch the first figure, waiting for some reason, some explanation, for the halt.

"Gone," says the first man, the big man.

More silence. More rain. Quiet cursing.

"We almost –"

"Almost isn't good enough."

Two figures turn to look at the third. Then, they meet each other's eyes. This didn't used to be him, this negativity, this harshness, this exacting idea of what is needed. He is the only one without some kind of hood, without some kind of jacket. His hair is plastered to his head. His face has the look of a boy forced to grow up before his time.

"Matsuda –"

But the man who might have answered to that name has already gone, running, in the direction of the first set of footsteps. "We'll find him!"

Things have changed.

The two left standing, the big man and the thin man, look at each other. Both of them know what this is about. Neither of them want to be the one to say it.

"He's going to kill himself if he carries on this way," says the thin one, the one with deep set eyes and a heavy brow. For a moment they have forgotten the man they are chasing, forgotten that the guns and badges in their pockets mean their first duty is to catch him, and not help their friend.

The big man is very still and doesn't say anything. Then, slowly, lifting one leg first (soaked to the knee with water, despite the fact that his pants were cut not to drag on the ground, cut _not_ to sop up the rain this way) and then the other, he begins his pursuit. Even he, though, is not sure which of the two running men his goal is tied to.

The third man watches him go. There is no point to this. The escaped man they had been chasing was nothing. A possible source of information on a serial killings case, and a shaky one at that. He was not to be trusted. He wanted to cut a deal. He would say whatever made the cops look favourably on his statements. Losing track of him wouldn't set them back. Keeping him would have only cost them time.

Matsuda didn't see it that way. Matsuda didn't see the world in those kind of terms and he never had.

This, though, now, was different. It was worse.

This was because of Light.

The thin man sighs. He is alone in the middle of the street, on a moonless night, in the relentless rain. His comrades have gone. Really, he has no choice but to follow.

His limbs are burning. He takes one step, then another, starts to gather speed. All he wants to do is collapse in some dry place and be away from this.

Nothing has been the same since Yellowbox.

He gives chase. If nothing else, he knows he has at least one duty here –

- To get Matsuda home safe.


	2. Interrogation

Disclaimer: don't own, making no money, lyrics line: Banquet by Bloc Party

Note: AMG IT IS 5AM AND I JUST GOT IN FROM A GEEK-IN =D It was amazing. For any Torchwood fans, you must go RIGHT NOW to look at anything by Galadriel1010 and LiquidLash as they are fantastically awesome people. Oh, and HermitKnut too =]

OK chapter as promised, for anyone who is actually reading this.

x

**Chapter Two – Interrogation**

-

_Heart of stone, a smoking gun,  
I can give you life, I can take it away_

-

"Otoro. If you know anything about the Red Ruby killings, you need to tell us." Ide has both his palms on the desk between them, and leans forward. His clothes are clinging to him unpleasantly. He doesn't want to be here. He's starting to feel as if he's getting too old for this. He wants to go home.

The man across from him, Otoro, is wiry and thin-faced. He is entirely made up of cruelty and baseness and substance abuse, and he's giving Ide the kind of sneer that he knows means 'I'm not telling you _anything_, pig.'

Then he decides he will be so good as to verbalise it. "Not tellin' you nuthin', you pig."

Not as eloquent as he'd been in Ide's mind. Ide sat down.

"Listen to me, Otoro." He snaps his fingers, drawing the man's gaze back to him. "Look at me. Okay? And listen. We didn't chase you for forty minutes in this weather so that when you told us you're not telling us anything, we could just go 'oh, guess that's us done then', and let you go. You're staying here until we get something solid from you."

Otoro sniffs, rubs a finger under a hooked nose. "What about if I don' _know_ 'nything?"

Ide sits back in his chair. He makes sure to keep eye contact. Once upon a time he'd have delivered this line as a threat, and the man he'd be introducing would have been Aizawa. Now the line was a warning, a genuine plea for his compliance, and the man on the other side of the door was not a strict, not as controlled, as his old friend.

"Hey," Ide says, spreading his hands, leaning back. "Maybe you don't. Maybe I believe you. None of that matters. Because in about sixty seconds a man is going to come through that door who insisted we keep chasing you after we'd decided you were worthless to us. That man has a personal stake in this case, in ways you will never be able to imagine. That man will allow himself to get kicked out of the force before he lets you walk out of here without giving him any information. So, last chance. What have you got to tell us?"

Otoro stares at him insolently. "I been arrested before, eh? I know this Good Cop, Bad Cop shit."

Ide's shoulders slump. "Yeah," he says. "I thought I did, too." There's a sound of footsteps, loud voices, one of them angry and brusque. "He's early."

He gets up. He has no intention of leaving the room, though, not these days. The door opens. Matsuda comes in.

Otoro is halfway through saying a line that starts "So you dis –" when Matsuda is upon him. He has pulled him out of his chair and thrown him against the wall, face very close to his.

"Tell me everything you know," he says, in the voice Ide has always thought is halfway between a bitten-back snarl and a loosed growl.

"'Ey, put me down!" Otoro demands, glaring at Matsuda, squirming under his hand.

"No." Matsuda pushes his face closer. "Tell me what you know."

Ide looks at the screen. There's no one behind it now. There never is when they let Matsuda in to interrogate someone, not these days. If they don't see it, it doesn't happen. They choose not to see it because he closes cases.

Ide is the only one who stays behind these days, the only one to make sure Matsuda keeps his promise of never going too far, never leaving any marks.

"Don't know anything," Otoro insists, writhing under the hand still.

"Yes you do."

"Prove it."

Ide didn't think there was enough space between them left for Matsuda to lean closer, but he manages it. He brings his mouth to Otoro's ear, and Ide can just about make out – "_I'll break your God damn neck_."

So long as he doesn't, Ide tells himself. So long as he doesn't actually go through with it, this is just the old routine. This is normal. This is okay. This is allowed.

Matsuda continues to murmur threats into Otoro's ear, and Ide notices the man's eyes slide across, take in the look in the cop's eyes. There is something feral there, something unhinged, something that warns that the normal rules of society and law are _not_ going to hold him back. Ide knows that Otoro can see that as well as he can.

This was never okay. Not in any one of its pieces.

Otoro suddenly lets out some kind of strangled cry. "How'd you know about her, guy?!"

Matsuda releases him. Otoro, terror consuming his faculties, drops to the ground. His legs don't even make a motion to support him.

"Tell me." Matsuda is upright, his poise strictly controlled, his hair shadowing his eyes, a far cry from the man Ide used to think he knew.

"Okay, man, okay! I tell you what I know, but it ain't much!"

Ide steps forward. He clicks the tape recorder on. Otoro starts talking, prompted by Matsuda's questions, and Ide drowns it out.

"I'm heading outside," he says. Then he adds, as a warning, a reminder, "I'll be watching."

"Yeah," Matsuda says, and carries on.


	3. Descent

Disclaimer: yeah I still don't own it. Lyrics: Bloc Party's 'Hunting for Witches'

Note: Woo, actually got some positive feedback for this thing! So dark!Matsuda gets a provisional pass, right? Excellent. I should be writing my NaNoWriMo story. I'm so tired and bored and frustrated. And I just ate an entire candy necklace in ten minutes. I'm rotting on the inside, I just know it. I want to read I, Claudius instead of writing. I want to watch TBBT. I want to be good enough at writing real people to write the massive love-triangle TBBT story I conceptualised. I am so full of self-loathing atm.

Wrong place to rant. Enjoy the chapter! The slash starts here.

x

**Chapter Three - Descent**

**-**

_All reasonable thought is being drowned out  
By the non-stop baying, baying, baying for blood_

_-_

Ide stands behind the one way window and watches them. Otoro is talking fast now, eager to tell Matsuda anything he wants.

"_How'd you know about her, guy?!"_

It always goes this way.

"_Okay, man, okay! I tell you what I know, but it ain't much!"_

Matsuda always works it out. Which pressure points to push. How to cause pain without causing pain. Terror without touching.

How had it come to this?

-

Once upon a time there was a boy, and his name was Light. Reads like a fairytale, Ide thinks bitterly.

Once upon a time the boy called Light seemed to think he ruled the fucking world. Once upon a time, the boy called Light thought he was smarter than everyone in the world put together, and acted accordingly. And maybe he'd had good motives and maybe it was just what power did to you, and maybe Ide blames him and maybe he hates him and maybe he doesn't.

None of that really matters. Ide, he put the Kira case behind him years ago. It left its scars, the way it was always going to, and it left a current that passed through them all at the most random moments, shocking them, stunning them, turning them. But afterwards, everything always reverted, always fell back into place. They had been hurt. Light, the things he had done, the things he said, he'd cut them deeply. But they were strong. They healed after every slice of the knife, they brought their heads up, they went on.

Almost all of them, anyway.

-

Matsuda emerges from the room, his eyes still half shadowed. The door shuts behind him, and as it clicks closed, Ide sees Otoro crumple onto the table.

"I think you went too far," he says, quietly. "What did you say to him?"

"_How'd you know about her, guy?!"_

Matsuda doesn't answer.

"Did he say anything useful?"

Matsuda is walking towards the door. This time, he doesn't forget his coat. He pulls it on, heavy cloth against wet clothes. It's a long way home.

"Matsuda. Did we get anything from him?" _Look at me, damn it, don't act like you don't know me, you piece of –_

"No."

Ide cuts off his internal diatribe and focuses again on Matsuda. His shoulders slump. "I'm sorry. Nothing - ?"

"Nothing." Matsuda is holding the tape recorder in his hand, and his knuckles are white. "Absolutely fucking _nothing_." On the last word, he throws the tape recorder down with such force that it shatters. Pieces of plastic fly off in all directions, tiny pieces of metal scatter under the chairs and tables, and the tape crunches under Matsuda's foot, some of the thin brown ribbon clinging to the wet underside of his boot.

Ide is silent. He looks at the shattered tape recorder, and then, he looks at Matsuda's face.

"Come home with me tonight," he says, and he tries to make it sound the same way Matsuda does when he says it, all command and set-in-stone decision, but it comes out pleading, it comes out desperate.

Matsuda doesn't protest. "I'll drive."

It's still raining. Ide can't remember the last time he saw quite this much rain all at once. It's mad. It's like the deluge come again.

That, Ide thinks, would mean that they were the impure ones. They were the ones that had sinned, that were going to get swept away by the flood, that were going to perish in water and leave the way open for the new world.

With Matsuda so close to him, his brow furrowed, his eyes dark, Ide thinks that that's probably the right way to look at things.

-

A long time ago, in a kingdom not so far away, poison seeped from the grave of an angel. Light had been beautiful on the outside, startlingly handsome and undeniably captivating, but on the inside he had been rotting. And when he died, all that rot and all that decay came pouring out, and latched onto the first innocent mind they could find.

"_The HELL do you think you're doing, Matsuda?!"_

"_I'm getting the job done! Isn't that what you've always wanted me to do, huh? Be better at this? Get things done?"_

"_Not like this!"_

"_Then like what?! LIKE WHAT?_

Matsuda Touta was a casualty of war. He hadn't died that day on Yellowbox, but something had begun eating at him, changing him, and as far as most people were concerned, the Matsuda That Was was long gone, and now there was just – him. The steely faced man in the driving seat, with iron in his soul and a heart hardening into diamond.

Ide's the last one left. Aizawa quit, once Matsuda started acting out, starting trying dirty tactics, and everyone let it go. Aizawa could never have let it go. Ide remembers, all too keenly, the day he had left – the fight, the shouting, the blows.

"_NOT LIKE LIGHT!"_

_Dead silence. "Say that again."_

"_No. I'm quitting."_

"_SAY IT AGAIN! I FUCKING DARE YOU!"_

"_Put your gun away, Matsuda. This is through."_

Mogi's still there, in body, if not in spirit. He does his job. He's there for the same reason Ide is – well, half of it, anyway – to make sure Matsuda doesn't get carried away. That's what they are, now, that's what this shit has reduced them to – little more than nannies.

But Ide, he has another reason to hang around. It's stupid and delusional and he knows that one day it'll probably be the death of him, but –

"We're here." Matsuda's voice breaks through his reverie. He's right. They're outside Ide's block of apartments.

They walk in silence up the stairs, and Ide's mind is blank. He unlocks the door to his apartment, while Matsuda hangs back, polite, respectful, patient. The door opens. They go inside. It closes. It locks. Matsuda's patience is gone and he crushes Ide against the door, smashing their mouths together, fingers already working down the buttons on his shirt.

It'll probably be the death of him, but –

- Ide knows Matsuda is still in there, somewhere, and he can get him home safe.


	4. Dark

Disclaimer: No owning going on here. None at all. Lyrics - Dustland Fairytale, The Killers

Note: Yay more dark!Matsu. And overlysexual!Ide. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote this story, in hindsight. I've had such a weird day. I'm so tired. I'm so behind. All I want to do is sleep and sleep and sleep.

Lots of conversation here with very few flashbacks. Enjoy.

x

**Chapter Four – Dark**

**-**

_Now Cinderella, don't you go to sleep  
It's such a bitter form of refuge  
Don't you know the castle's under siege?  
And everybody needs you_

-

Sex with Matsuda is rough, overwhelming, and lasts for as long as he wants it to. Every time they fall into bed together, Ide is alert, waiting, watching, desperate for a crack in his stony facade, for a glimmer of the man he knew to come through.

It never comes. He clings to memories, and finds himself groaning into the bed, into Matsuda's shoulder, entwining their arms together, ignoring everything that isn't the feel of him, the smell of him, the sensation of sweat and heat on skin.

-

Afterwards, Matsuda sits at the side of the bed. Sometimes, he cries. Ide wonders if he will tonight. He pulls himself up, thin sheets tangled around his midsection, and presses himself against the younger man's back.

"What is it today?" he asks. His voice is noise in silence. The question is routine.

"These killings," Matsuda says. He's honest here like he isn't anywhere else. It's here, in the cloying dark, with the sense of guilt and wrongness, the taste of lust, pressing in on them, that Ide gleans what truths he can from him. It's here he learnt about his feelings for Light, realising the truth of them when even Matsuda himself did not. It's here, in this room, on a similar kind of night, when Matsuda broke down entirely, clutching at Ide, clawing at him, spilling his guts, changing Ide's life forever.

"They're bad." Ide traces his fingers down Matsuda's arm. For now, just for now, he can pretend Matsuda is the way he used to be, that this thing between them is the way he had hoped it would be, once upon a time. His body is still the same, still young, still lingering between definition and the casual slipping of one plane into another. If he focuses on that, Ide can pretend.

"Heart attacks," Matsuda mumbles. "It's a Death Note."

"Near's involved." Matsuda already knows this. But Ide, he feels he has to keep the conversation moving. Has to stop Matsuda lingering on things like Death Notes.

"Yeah. That's one good thing." A pause. "Not criminals, this time."

"No." Ide brings his mouth to the point where Matsuda's neck fades into his shoulder.

"This guy's just killing women. Rapes them, first. Probably with them complying, if he's worked out how to use the Note properly."

"He's a sick fuck," Ide tells him, bringing his hand around to the front of him, wishing he could get Matsuda to get his mind off the job, just for one night.

Matsuda never used to be that good, as far as being a cop went. Then Kira happened, and Matsuda was still pretty useless, but he found his ways to help. And, in the end, he turned out not to be useless at all.

Things were different now.

Matsuda was the kind of cop, now, that you never looked in the eye. He was strong and he was fast and he was terrifying, and the only thing he ever cared about watch catching the bad guy. His compassion had been eroded away, his naivety, his youthfulness, his optimism – everything that had made him so quintessentially _Matsuda_ had run off him, eaten away by corruption and the memory of a brown haired boy riddled with his bullets.

"At least Light had morals," Matsuda says then, and Ide freezes, his hand on the inside of Matsuda's thigh.

"Don't say that," he whispers.

"It's true."

"It's not."

"It is."

Ide draws back. "For fuck's sake, Matsuda."

Matsuda turns on him, the darkness in his eyes faded to grey. He doesn't look angry, now. He looks lost, and sad, and out of place.

"At least he _tried_ to –"

Ide cut him off, pushing his palm against Matsuda's mouth. "I don't want to hear it. Matsuda, you have to stop this. Stop going over it. Stop trying to find morals and reasons and rationality and excuses. You just have to _forget_ it."

"I can't. Maybe _you_ can-" it's harsh, pointed – "but it meant something to me. It _changed_ me."

Ide's stare turns baleful. "You don't have to tell me that."

"I know."

Silence returns. After a minute or two, Ide lies down. He doesn't want to listen to this. He didn't want to be doing this tonight. All he wanted was to not run out in the rain, to not have Matsuda forced one more step along this fucked up path he'd found himself on, to get home and go to bed.

These days, it feels like a lot to ask. He closes his eyes.

A little while later, when Matsuda probably thinks he's already asleep, Ide feels the other man's weight come down next to him. He feels his breath on his face, and keeps his eyes closed.

"I'll stop," Matsuda whispers, breathy and tired. "I'll stop. I'll stop going over it. I'll stop thinking about Light. I'll try to – I'll try to go back –" His breath hitches.

Ide remains still, and silent. If he knew he was awake, Matsuda wouldn't be saying any of this.

"Ide," he breathes, and Ide thinks it sounds like he's crying. "I don't know what's happened to me. It's like I'm turning to stone. I can't feel – I can't – it's like I've become someone else. All the time, I just feel so – so angry, so ready to kill – so –"

_Matsuda_, Ide thinks, somewhere beyond the sound of his heart breaking.

"I don't know what to do." Ide can barely make out the words, now, his voice has dropped so low, so quiet. "Ide...I'm dying here. I've got no clue what – I'm going insane. It's like something's eating away at my brain. What little I ever had. I can't –"

He breaks off again, and this time, he doesn't speak again.

Ide knows he can open his eyes know, tell Matsuda he heard everything he said, say he'll try to help. He knows he won't. He knows because he's tried to draw this thing out of Matsuda before, tried to get him open and honest in the light of day, and he knows that all that will happen is anger, the feeling of betrayal, and Matsuda storming out.

And besides...a part of him, a small part, is living for these moments. The moments when Matsuda thinks he's asleep and is honest with him, shows him he's still in there, somewhere. Ide just has to coax that out of him. He can change him back. He's sure of it.

Because if he can't –

Well. If he can't, it just doesn't bear thinking about.


	5. Static Motion

Disclaimer: Not my property, Death Note is. Crap, no idea why I went Yoda there. Lyrics: The Weepies with 'Not Dead Yet'

Note: I am feeling a little existential today. I am feeling tired and happy like the kind of strung out happy of staying up til seven in the morning, like life is eating up your veins even though all you're doing is sitting. And I'm telling you, fanfiction friends, because this is one of the only places people I know won't find it. And I need to say it. I feel like we have done a Good Thing today, and I feel like there is sadness I cannot fix. I don't like this. I feel odd and incomplete and half-formed and half-growing but mostly stunted. I feel strange.

This is not a very good chapter. This is a terrible little link up chapter. As a result, I am going to post both 5 and 6. Less reviews but honestly I think you getting the story is more important than me getting feedback. Not that the story is anything much special. But if you are enjoying it, this is not the way it should be paused.

By the way. If you try not to focus too much on the plot, this story is much better. It is no secret that I fail at plot.

x

**Chapter Five - Static. Motion.**

-

_Come on, come on, come on,  
Give me a sign, a light  
Cause there's another way I'd rather be  
...If I could only get you alone. _

-

'_Today's news-at-nine! This morning a body was discovered near the market district, bearing the same markings as the victims of the Red Ruby Killer. Whether or not a ruby was found on this new body is uncertain. The identity of the victim has not been released. The killings are being conducted the same way as the Kira Killings of several years ago, though the police have refused to comment on any connection between the two cases..._

'_And now, the weather! As you can see, it's been a pretty gloomy week...'_

Three days later it is still raining, and the information that Otoro had thought was useless has brought them so close to their killer, that if Ide holds his breath, he's sure he can hear the murderer's heart beat. They were so close, they almost had him –

And then he struck again.

The body found that morning belonged to a young woman named Kikuchi Misa. When they'd heard the girl's first name, the same ripple had passed over all of them. It was coincidence, Ide told himself. There are no connections to the Kira case. This is just some other bastard with a Death Note. Though if I ever get to come face to face with the shinigami who dropped this one –

His thoughts are interrupted by Mogi. He drops a file onto his desk, and then settles onto the end of it.

"This one's thrown him for a loop." His voice is low, and grave. Ide picks up the file, and thumbs through it. Same cuts on the face, on the chest...the plastic ruby nestled between her legs.

"Matsuda?" he asks blandly.

"Who else?"

Ide nods, absently. "What can we do, I suppose..."

"Solve this," Mogi says, and something in his tone makes Ide look up. He sounds severe, serious – even more than usual. This isn't platitudes. This is a plan. "Solve in. Then – fix him. By force, if necessary. It's getting too far."

Ide studies Mogi's face. "Yes," he says, after a little pause. "You're right."

"I know. Come on, let's shut this case already."

Then he's gone. Mogi has got even more brusque and taciturn these last years, and now, Ide thinks he's pretty much the only person Mogi will say more than five words in a row to. He's glad of that. He's done all he can to forget the Kira case, but the bonds formed during those four years...

Well, he still visits Aizawa twice a week for poker, after all.

-

The first night that they slept together they had both been pretty drunk.

That had been his way of coping with it, to start with. Get drunk. Cry. Get more drunk. Forget. Then, after a while, Ide found himself incorporated into the regime – get drunk, cry, get more drunk, call Ide, get Ide drunk. He found he didn't mind. It stopped Matsuda from crying, stopped him from feeling like he was being torn apart, and if Ide was honest, he had always _liked_ Matsuda just a little too much.

He couldn't say he was unhappy, though, when Matsuda started cutting back on the drinking. It wasn't good for him, after all. And if it meant he got a little bit colder towards people, if it meant he got a little bit more angry at suspects and Aizawa had to shout him down more often, so be it. It showed he was still alive, that he still cared.

Then he started changing more and more, and Ide couldn't dismiss it any more. But it had gone past the point where he could stop it, where he could intervene, where he could help.

It had gone past the point where Ide had a chance to change things.

One night, there was a knock on his door. Matsuda was there when he opened it, swaying the way he did when he'd been mixing his drinks, eyes a little bit unfocused.

"I love you," he'd said, with intent, not the kind of sloppy, overly affectionate away he'd been years back when he got drunk. Then he'd plunged forward, clamping his mouth on Ide's, and Ide had been getting pretty bombed that night, too, in celebration of closing a pretty tough case.

He knew he should have pushed him off should have looked after him the way friends do for friends when they're pissed out of their skulls. But he didn't. No, instead, he found himself gasping around Matsuda's tongue, moaning into him, letting himself be dragged to the couch, undressed, pressed down, taken –

He'd woken up two, maybe three hours later, still pretty drunk. Matsuda had, at some point, moved him into the bedroom, and was sitting at the end of the bed. Ide remembers hearing rain thrumming against the glass.

"I'm a mess, Ide."

How Matsuda knew he was awake, Ide didn't know. Maybe he didn't.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at me. I don't know how to cope. I'm going down, Ide. I'm getting – cold. It's like forgetting who you are. I feel like I'm becoming –"

The hitch in his tone when he broke off scared Ide. "What? Becoming what?"

"Light." His voice was quiet, strained. "The way he really was. Like we saw in Yellowbox. Cold. Focused. Angry. Obsessive. I'm becoming that, Ide, and I _don't know why_."

Ide had told him he was being stupid. He had pulled him back to bed, kissed him feverishly, tried to drown his fears in his adoration. For that night, it had worked.

In the morning, Matsuda was even worse than before.

And he just kept changing.


	6. End

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. Lyrics are The Weepies again: Can't Go Back Now. Second lyric line is a fragment. I like it this way, for this.

Note: This is my favourite chapter. I could have done it better. But I like it. And one day I will twist it and tweak it and wrap up the good bits in a parcel and try again, and what comes out will be all the desperation and frustration you have felt and never found the words or rhyme and reason for.

I told you I was in a weird mood. Once again, plot is just a device I use to put people in situations that are more interesting that armchairs. Drama, I fail.

x

**Chapter Six - End**

-

_you can't go back now._

_...there will be days..._

-

It took them just two more days. Two days, filled with relentless rain and even more relentless reporters, to catch him. Ide had seen it, all of a sudden, the last clue they'd needed nestled on Kikuchi's body. He'd gone straight to the coroner's, caught the tiny, see through scrap, matched it to the gauze curtains that the first victim, Kuzuo Keiko, had had hanging in her room, the same curtains her husband sold –

The Red Ruby Killer turns out to be an unremarkable man called Kuzuo Tetsuya. He turns out to have been right under their noses the whole time, a wife-killer who'd panicked and escalated into serial killings to cover his tracks. With, of course, the use of one very special black notebook.

The existence of the Death Note is hushed up, though the press insist on speculating. Even now, years on, the truth of the Kira case has been kept secret and safe. Even now, there are others who, by fluke or design, have the power to kill with the stroke of a pen tumble into their hands.

Ide is jubilant, ecstatic, until he remembers the wide, staring eyes of Kikuchi's corpse, the mutilation of Kuzuo Keiko's breasts. Then, he wants to find some way, any way, into the realm of the shinigami, wants to howl and scream at them, want to _show_ them, wants to bring before them Kikuchi and Kuzuo and _Matsuda_, and just get them to admit that this was _wrong_-

They never would, of course.

It's still raining. The case is closed.

Mogi's eyes meet Ide's across the crowded briefing room.

Their day is far from over.

-

"Leave me alone!"

"We want to _help_ you, Matsuda –"

"I don't care!"

"Neither do we. We're not leaving."

Matsuda brings his hand down heavily onto the desk, sending papers flying. His teeth are clenched. They are alone. Everyone else went home, hours ago.

The motion thrills Ide in a way he can't explain. Perhaps, he thinks, it's the glint of frustration in Matsuda's eyes, the gasp of immaturity in the gesture, a throwback to the way he was.

"Matsuda." He steps forward. "Come on. We don't – we can't say we know how this is going to work. But we have to do _something_. You're different – too different, and we –"

"Maybe I _like_ being this way!" Matsuda exclaims, eyes rimmed red in fury. "Ever think of that?"

"No, not really," Mogi admits, but the way he says it makes it sound like they did that on purpose.

"You don't," Ide tells him quietly. "Matsuda...come on. I know you. I've know you for years. We both have...this isn't...this isn't _you_. This guy who intimidates informants, who sulks, who broods, who gets angry over nothing, who thinks of nothing else but catching the bad guys."

"What's wrong with that, huh?" he demands. "You're just like Aizawa! The both of you, constantly telling me to buck up, and when I do – you try to - !"

Ide shakes his head. "Matsuda. You know that's not true. You know there's more to it than that. You know that this is you changing. You said it yourself, you think you're becoming like –"

"DON'T SAY IT!"

"- Light," Ide finishes, firmly, jaw set. "You are. You're becoming like him. But you can change. He couldn't. He was too blinded, too rotted away –"

Matsuda has turned away, and he's running.

"No you don't!" Mogi growls, and plunges after him, but Mogi's strength and size if no match for Matsuda's nimbleness, and he darts away, into the dark and rain.

Mogi swears, but Ide is already moving. "I'll go after him."

"Me too."

"No." Ide turns back to him, mind made up. "Let me try on my own, alright?" He has things he wants to say to Matsuda, alone, things that he wants the cover of darkness and a blanket of rain and nothing else around him when he says them.

Mogi looks, for a moment, like arguing. Then, he nods. "But then bring him back, okay? I have a few words for that one."

Ide agrees, and he follows Matsuda out into the rain.

-

Matsuda has never told Ide he loves him since that first night they were together, and Ide isn't even sure if he meant it then.

Ide has never told Matsuda he loves him, not once since he met him, even though he's been feeling it, more and more keenly every day, since long before the Kira case came to a close.

-

The streets are dark and deserted. It's almost midnight. Ide looks this way and that, and there's no sign of Matsuda, so he just murmurs a prayer for luck and plunges down a street at random, hoping it'll lead him true. He runs and runs, calling out, not caring how many citizens he disturbs, not caring the scene he's making and who might hear it, because he _saw_ that look in Matsuda's eye, the one that says he might still be salvageable, under all the wreckage.

And he saw the look underneath it, that spoke of desperation and desolation and self-loathing and the promise of death before dawn.

-

The nights between them have never been anything but lust and need. On the face of it, anyway. It's always been stress relief, control, desire, submission, everything rolled into one and torn apart between their bucking forms, and they've fought tooth and nail to keep it from resembling anything like care. But Ide's been slipping, because that's always been a lie for him; he's been pressing delicate kisses over Matsuda's skin, drawing patterns on his arms, murmuring nothingness into his ear.

And Matsuda has never once told him to stop.

-

The lights of the city are beginning to trail off. He's reaching the outskirts and he's sure he's not on the right track. Something starts to rise within him – he identifies it as panic, and speeds up.

Got to find him. Got to get to him. Got to stop him from –

-

- doing the stupidest thing he's ever done.

He should have stopped himself from doing it, from sleeping with Matsuda. It was so, so stupid. They were both drunk, they were both _men_, they both worked together, and Matsuda was getting all cold lately, and –

-

- he's about to turn around, desperation bringing bile to his throat, when he spots a figure. There's a light, and a warehouse, and the doors are opening, and in the background, the wharf –

_Oh, God!_

-

Yellowbox was where it all began, years ago, with a trigger being pulled and a boy screaming about betrayal and idiocy and foolishness and being God. Yellowbox was where Matsuda started coming apart, where all of them, if Ide is honest, started coming apart a bit, when it was fnally driven home that _Light was Kira_.

-

He reaches the doors, pulls them open, sure he's injured something in his arm but doesn't care. The warehouse is dark, pitch, the floor slick with rain, and Ide looks wildly around –

-

Yellowbox is where it is all going to end, and Matsuda –

-

-Matsuda has his gun in his hand, to his temple, his finger –

"_STOP!"_


	7. Rise

Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note. Lyrics are This Is The Future by Owl City.

Note: I hate that it took so long for me to get this up. I've had it written for ages, but sheer laziness stopped me. SORRY. I am going to make it up to any readers left by hopefully spam updating the next week or so. Love you all. Hope this end doesn't suck too hard.

x

**Chapter Seven - Rise**

-

_because this is the future_

_and you are alive_

_you're headed home_

-

If he hadn't shouted, and had just kept running, Matsuda would be dead.

If he had shouted, and had stopped running, Matsuda would be dead.

Because he did both, Matsuda is alive, pinned underneath him, angry, hurling his fists against Ide's chest, but alive, and his gun has skittered away into the shadows.

The warehouse door groans, and swings shut. They are alone and completely in the dark.

It's far from silent, though. Rain pounds on the roof, thrums against the thin sides of the warehouse, and Matsuda is shouting.

"Get off me! What right do you have – you said I was like Light! Like Light! You always said I wasn't and then you _said_ – and if Light is dead, if it's a good thing Light is dead, then –"

"I love you."

Ide realises he hasn't been listening to what Matsuda has been saying. He's just been studying the place where his face should be, seeing only vague movements in the pitch dark as Matsuda thrashes about, and it hits him then just what it would be like, just how much it would matter to him, if he went his whole life without looking at Matsuda ever again.

And he just...said it.

Underneath him, Matsuda has stilled.

"Wha -?"

"I love you," Ide repeats, and discovers he doesn't want to stop saying it. Not today, and not ever. "Matsuda, I love you. Don't you dare do this to me. Don't you dare."

Matsuda's stillness has subsided into shaking, and Ide thinks he can hear the quiet sounds of sobs.

"Matsuda," he says, his voice softer now, as he leans down, finds Matsuda's mouth with his ear. "You've changed. And yeah, you've changed to be like Light."

More sobs, and his body stiffens under him.

"But...you're still you. I know you are. I've seen it. Not often, but here and there, flashes of that guy I knew who told me I'd never had a great romance." In the dark, Ide grins, and he can hear rain dripping off his hair onto the floor. It must be after midnight now. It's been raining for a week. "Well, I have news for you. You were right. I hadn't. And I still haven't." His hands tighten around Matsuda's wrists. "I have something better. I have _you_. And I am not going to let anyone – not Light, not Kira, not you – take that away from me."

Matsuda still hasn't said anything. Ide almost doesn't care. He wants him to say it back, he does, but that...that doesn't matter. What matters is fixing him.

"Ide..."

"Matsuda. I'm gonna make you okay, yeah?"

A pause. Shaking. "...Yeah."

That's all Ide needed to hear.

-

By the time they make it outside, Matsuda leaning heavily on Ide, who's having a hard enough time staying upright, so many hours have passed that the sky is starting to get pale. A little way off, Mogi is standing, waiting for them.

It has stopped raining.

There are clouds in the sky, but they are beginning to drift away. Weak glimmers of sunlight are beginning to drift across the sky, and the shadows are clearing. Matsuda slips a little, leans more heavily into him, and Ide glances across at him.

His face is clearer than it has been in years. For the first time since the end of the Kira case, Matsuda looks as if his mind is occupied completely with just one issue – in this case, staying upright, and not dragging Ide down with him if he does slip.

Ide laughs. He can't help it. This, _this_ is Matsuda – this is the barely-out-of-boyhood man he knew, with the puppy dog eyes and the easy, lightbulb grin, and it's all there, all bound up in the fact that he's concentrating on standing up harder than he's concentrated on anything in his life.

He laughs and laughs and can't stop laughing, and then Matsuda is looking at him incredulously. The new, scarred face is still there, the same shadow of old threats and bad memories lingering behind his eyes, but it's battling with the spark of brightness, the glint of innocence.

He'll never be innocent again, Ide knows, knows he's had that taken from him by Light. That, if he's honest, is the main reason he's never entertained the notion that Light might have been right. Light stole something that was far more precious to Ide than the lives of people he didn't know – he stole Matsuda.

And Ide, Ide had stolen him back.

-

It hasn't rained in a while. There's been a bit of drizzle, here and there, but there's been no thunderstorms, no rainclouds, no remakings of the deluge. The skies have been clear; the skies have been bright.

Things are changing.

Matsuda yawns loudly. Ide looks up. His friend – his _lover_, he amends, silently, in his mind, because now that he's admitted to the emotion in it, it's wrong to call it anything else – is sprawled out on the grass beside him. His eyes are closed, and the muscles of his face are slack. He looks beautiful.

The sun is warm, but not hot, bright, but not dazzling. It is a perfect day, and it coincides with the first day off they have had in a while. Matsuda insisted they went to the park, and this thrilled Ide in ways he couldn't describe. Dragging him to a public park was something Matsuda would have done _before_ Kira, something that was woven into him, something that _fit_. Ide had gone along with it, even though he hated being outdoors, and even though Matsuda had refused to allow him to bring a book.

He grimaces, looking at Matsuda's peaceful form. The bastard, ordering him not to bring any literature and then just going off to sleep as soon as they got here. Good naturedly, Ide whapshim on the head with the back of his hand.

"Ow!" Matsuda says, jolting up. He scowls darkly. "What was that for?"

Ide studies his expression. There's still the hint of danger at the edges of it, a touch of ice curling around the sides of him. But it's fading. Each and every day, it is fading.

Matsuda is never going to be back to the way he was, not perfectly. But the Matsuda he has now – and Ide winces internally at the sheer insanity of him even _thinking_ something so soppily pathetic – the Matsuda he has now _is_ sort of perfect. In his own, unique, fucked up way.

Ide can deal with that.

Matsuda is watching his face carefully. "I'm going to kiss you," he declares.

Ide blinks. "Here? Now? In public?"

Matsuda raises his eyebrows. "S'matter? Thought you said you loved me?" He smiles a smile that is half wicked, half adorable, and entirely Matsuda.

"I do," Ide says, feeling a little uncomfortable. Emotional declarations have never been his strong suit. He isn't sure he'd even have been able to tell him back in the warehouse, if so much hadn't been at stake.

"Well, then you'll let me kiss you." He says it matter-of-factly, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"I – it doesn't really work like that! We're out in public, Matsuda, and –"

"Oh, Ide, " Matsuda says, and sighs theatrically. "You've never had a great romance."

Ide stares at him, dumbfounded, and then he laughs. Matsuda's been making him do that a lot lately.

He knows then that they're both going to be _fine_.


End file.
